Posts Tagged 'Synergy'

Citrix Synergy 2012 took over San Francisco this week. Because Citrix is one of SoftLayer's technology partners, you know we were in the house, and I thought I'd share a few SoftLayer-specific highlights from the conference.

Before I get too far, I should probably back up give you a little context for what the show is all about if you aren't familiar with it. In his opening keynote, Citrix CEO Mark Templeton explained:

"We call it 'Citrix Synergy,' but really it's 'Synergy' because this is an event that's coordinated by us across a hundred sponsors, our ecosystem partners, companies in the industry that we work together with to bring you an amazing set of solutions around cloud, virtualization, networking and mobility."

Given how broad of a spectrum those areas of technology represent, the short four-day agenda was jam-packed with informational sessions, workshops, demos and conversations. It goes without saying that SoftLayer had to be in the mix in a BIG WAY. We had a booth on the expo hall floor, I was lined up to lead a breakout session about how business can "learn how to build private clouds in the cloud," and we were the proud presenting sponsor of the huge Synergy Party on Thursday night.

Our partnership with Citrix is unique. We incorporate Citrix NetScaler and Citrix XenServer as part of our service offerings. Plus, Citrix is also a SoftLayer customer, using SoftLayer infrastructure to offer a hosted desktop solution. Designed and architected from the ground up to run in the cloud, the Citrix Virtual Demo Center provides a dashboard interface for managing Citrix XenDesktop demo environments that are provisioned on-demand using SoftLayer's infrastructure.

My biggest thrill at the conference came when I was asked to speak and share a little of our expertise in a keynote address on simplifying cloud networking. I like to tell people I have a great face for radio, but that didn't keep me off the stage. The hall was packed to capacity and after defeating a few "demo gremlins," I got to show off how easy SoftLayer makes it for our customers to take advantage of amazing products like Citrix Netscaler VPX:

In my "Learn How to Build Private Clouds in the Cloud" breakout session, I had a little more time to speak to the larger question of how SoftLayer is approaching the shift to cloud-specific architectures and share some best practices in moving to a private cloud. Private clouds are a great way to provide real-time service delivery of IT resources with a single-tenant, customized, secure environment. However, the challenge of scaling and managing physical resources still exists, so I tried to explain how businesses can leverage an Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider to add scalability to a private cloud environment.

Thanks to SynergyTV, that presentation has been made available for all to see:

As I joked at the beginning of the breakout session, an attendee at Citrix Synergy was probably bombarded by "the cloud" in presentations and conversations at the show. While it's important to demystify the key terms we use on a daily basis, a few straight days of keynotes and breakout sessions about the cloud can get you thinking, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Beyond our capabilities as a cloud infrastructure provider, SoftLayer knows how to have a good time, so after we took care of the "work" stuff in the sessions above, we did our best to help provide a little "play" as well. This year, we were the proud sponsor of the Synergy Party, featuring Lifehouse!

As Chief Scientist (or Chief Boffin, if you like), I spend a significant amount of time participating in industry, partner and customer events alike. This week is a great example, as I will be speaking at both All About the Cloud and the Citrix Synergy event in San Francisco. I will be covering similar ground on both occasions: the general idea is that the world does not revolve around "the cloud." In fact, "the cloud" tends to be good for certain things and not so good for others. The challenge is that many customers seem to think that cloud is a panacea, solving all of their problems. Often, customers come to us with a blurred idea of why they want cloud, sometimes defaulting to, "The CEO says we need some cloud."

My presentation at the All About the Cloud event is going to focus on the cloud question by trying to understand what each tool does well and so you can deploy accordingly to ensure needs are met. I'll provide a backdrop market growth and then dive into dedicated, virtual and hybrid (cloud + dedicated) solutions with an eye to understanding each solution in broad terms ... As an aside, I wanted to show up with a drill, a nail and a chunk of 2x4 to demonstrate this: I was going to pound the nail into the board with the drill, and then I was told this would be a bad idea. I may yet show up with some tools – all I need is a Home Depot close to the Palace Hotel!

The Citrix presentation is not quite so bold - well, it did not involve props in its initial incarnation. For the Synergy crowd, I'll speak to a few case studies that leverage hybrid solutions to best meet their needs. Specifically, I will discuss companies that have deployed cloud + dedicated, SoftLayer dedicated + someone else's cloud (the horror!) and an enterprise example with a mix of internal data center assets and SoftLayer assets.

The enterprise example is an interesting one and it is timely given what Citrix is up to. Part of the challenge with most enterprise customers is the fact that many have invested significant capital (both dollars and the human variety) in their own infrastructure. This often means that an additional level of complexity is introduced as the enterprise must consider how to bridge the gap between their own infrastructure and another, external (hopefully a SoftLayer) environment.

Citrix is about to launch Cloud Bridge which will help to manage through some of this – the offering enables customers to transparently connect their own data centers with an off premise cloud environment. SoftLayer can make this happen in two ways. Cloud Bridge will sit within Netscaler Platinum offering that we support and customers will have the ability to deploy themselves should they choose to.

I will follow up on this blog with some depth that covers both presentations, as I think this is a conversation worth continuing. In the meantime, I am off to find a Home Depot ...

The week of May 10, I’ll be heading off to San Francisco with a full complement of SoftLayer personnel to attend and present at Synergy (www.citrixsynergy.com), Citrix’s annual conference. We are heading out in force to deliver our message on the advantages of utilizing Infrastructure as a Service.

If you are familiar with SoftLayer, then you know our value proposition: we can provide network and compute infrastructure to our customers faster, better, and with a less financial burden than doing it on your own. I’ll be making a presentation on Wednesday May 12th highlighting the advantages of IaaS and examples of business getting more done more quickly for less by using a service provider like SoftLayer.

In addition, on Thursday the 13th, I’ll be discussing the managed vs. automated self-managed models of IaaS with Jon Greaves of Carpathia (http://www.carpathiahosting.com/blogs/carpathia-blog). It ought to be an interesting discussion that helps customers decide which model is right for them.

SoftLayer is a Gold Sponsor at the event and we will have some other management on site as well as members of the sales team discussing our service at our booth in the Solutions Expo.

I didn’t make up the phrase “Adjacent Synergies” but I think it counts as a double in buzzword bingo. I would have used “Synergistic Adjacencies” instead.